Category Archives: Scribbles

Talented Horsewoman

Once I start an L.C. Evans book, I can’t stop, and TH was no exception. The title is a little strange, but the woman it apparently applied to was as congenial as the heroine of the other Evans’ book, “We Interrupt This Date.”

The horse part of the story was interesting (I didn’t know, for instance, that horses were intelligent enough to get bored) but the whodunit, of course, was the guiding force. Talk about misdirection. I thought I had it figured out several times until the surprising ending, making me feel as dumb as the TH thought she was. Nicely done. (I wish this book was available on the Kindle.)

The creature Helen Thomas

Glad to see the creature has been retired/fired/whatever after her slur on Israeli Jews. ‘Course it took three days and no publicity by her peers in the newspaper biz. Just blogs. To be expected. Imus or some other white male drops a slur and within a few hours he’s on the front page of every newspaper in the land.

Thomas, of course, is a woman and therefore a member of the woman-and-minorities lucky-sperm Multicultural Club. Which isn’t multi, actually, since it mainly concerns blacks and Hispanics. Not Asians, who are dismissed by mutliculties as the “model minority,” and certainly not white males. Anyhow. Thomas was a joke before she slurred a nation. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

UPDATE:  Here’s a perfect example of the tyranny of the Multicultie crowd.

Texas Capitol

ten_commandmentsThe fabled Ten Commandments monument on the Texas Capitol lawn that has, since its erection in 1961, periodically driven atheists and the ACLU mad. Heh.

Earmarks eliminate jobs

Your average economically-illiterate pol might think a congressman’s pork  helps the little people in his district. Not according to a new study:

“…the study found that in the years following a congressman acquiring a powerful committee assignment, the average company in his state cut back capital expenditures by 15 percent. In one prominent example, Alabama went from receiving $6 million less in annual earmark spending than other states to $90 million above the state average after Republican Sen. Richard Shelby assumed the chairmanship of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1997. Shelby earmarked $15 million for low-cost fabricated housing, but the study found that one of Alabama’s largest suppliers of this housing, Homes Inc., correspondingly reduced capital expenditures by 79.5 percent and downsized its work force by 30 percent…The pattern repeats itself across decades and over thousands of firms.”

Could be why, despite the “stimulus,” unemployment is 9.7 percent.

Via Instapundit.

Viet Nam, 1969

Dick+Stanley+in+VietnamThis was somewhere in the foothills of the Annamese Cordillera southwest of Da Nang, late August or September. When I was using lace-up zippers in my boots but before, it seems to be, I started adding my dog tags to them for surer body identification. Note the bipod on the M-14 at left.

I like my Kindle 2

I’m only surprised at how quickly the battery runs down if you use it on and off all day long. I read a novel, Enders Game, over the weekend, is how I found out. It’s cool being able to surf the text Web for free and email personal Word and/or PDF files to the device for later use.

So far I just like to read. Currently that’s The PayPal Wars: Battles With Ebay, The Media, The Mafia, and The Rest of Planet Earth, whose lazy author uses an incredible number of cliches but otherwise produced an entertaining tale of a Web startup’s vicissitudes. I have found this good site filled with Kindle advice, more than I’m ever likely to follow, but it’s nice to know it’s there.

Murder in the Home

Things weren’t always peaceful at the state’s home for poor and disabled Confederate veterans, at 1600 West Sixth Street in Austin. More than 2,000 lived there, from 1887 to 1953—ironically quite close to Clarksville, a neighborhood of frame bungalows and freed slaves.

Here’s the tale, taken from a 1904 issue of the Dallas Morning News. The flight of the 74-year-old Rebel perp to downtown still wouldn’t be hard. It’s just a short walk, east across  Lamar Boulevard and a dozen blocks more. He was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon: a chair.